Publication Date:

Discipline:

Source:

Product number:

Length:

Also Available in:

description

A common corporate shortcut is to reward salespeople primarily on how much they sell or how much revenue they bring in. This shortcut often encourages behavior that can destroy your profits or undermine your efforts to increase them. It trains salespeople to ask their superiors for lower prices instead of negotiating with customers for higher ones. To retrieve the higher profits they deserve, companies need to make the transition from volume-based sales incentive systems to profit-based ones. This applies to your own sales representatives and to your channel partners, who act as your agents to the end customer.

This chapter is excerpted from "Manage for Profit, Not for Market Share: A Guide to Greater Profits in Highly Contested Markets."

learning objective:

To help you establish a culture of profitability by aligning incentives with corporate profit goals.

Publication Date:

Discipline:

Source:

Product number:

Length:

Also Available in:

description

Getting profits back from your customers involves wielding the full power in your marketing mix: product, promotion, place, and price. This chapter focuses on the ideas and techniques you can use to improve the first three of those elements in your marketing mix. The authors discuss segmentation and how to adapt your product and service portfolio to align it with your segments, and show how the nature and timing of your promotional activities can help you attract more customers, not inadvertently drive them into your competitors' arms.

This chapter is excerpted from "Manage for Profit, Not for Market Share: A Guide to Greater Profits in Highly Contested Markets."

learning objective:

To show you how to find and retrieve hidden profit by making subtle changes to your marketing mix.

Publication Date:

Discipline:

Source:

Product number:

Length:

Also Available in:

description

Given the passion most managers bring to their work, it is easy to forget that business is not warfare. Business and war differ in two critical aspects: first, war always ends, but competition never does; second, there are no customers on a military battlefield. In the absence of breakthrough innovation, peaceful competition in markets makes sense. Peaceful competitors strive to extend the life span and profitability of their established products. They differentiate products to match up with customer preferences and concentrate on profitable customer segments, even if that means ceding market share to competitors in areas where they are not strong enough.

This chapter is excerpted from "Manage for Profit, Not for Market Share: A Guide to Greater Profits in Highly Contested Markets."

learning objective:

To show you how you can extend the life and span of the profitability of your mature products.

Publication Date:

Discipline:

Source:

Product number:

Length:

Also Available in:

description

Challenging and changing your existing assumptions about your customers is the most important first step in identifying your hidden profit opportunities. It is always easier to retool your thinking-your assumptions about what your customers want and are willing to pay-than to retool the actual products and services you offer. This chapter explains the dangers inherent in using gut feeling, anecdotal evidence, and other corporate shortcuts to guide your decision making, and uses the links between price and profit to demonstrate the advantages of data-driven analysis.

This chapter is excerpted from "Manage for Profit, Not for Market Share: A Guide to Greater Profits in Highly Contested Markets."

learning objective:

Challenging and changing your existing assumptions about your customers is the most important first step in identifying your hidden profit opportunities. It is always easier to retool your thinking-your assumptions about what your customers want and are willing to pay-than to retool the actual products and services you offer. This chapter explains the dangers inherent in using gut feeling, anecdotal evidence, and other corporate shortcuts to guide your decision making, and uses the links between price and profit to demonstrate the advantages of data-driven analysis.

Publication Date:

Discipline:

Source:

Product number:

Length:

Also Available in:

description

Customer intelligence-about their preferences, about their buying behavior-can help you make a number of decisions based on fact, not conventional wisdom. This chapter will show you how to analyze and interpret data you already have within your company. While internal data clearly has its limitations, it can tell you a lot about what your customers want, what they do, and how they respond to competitive threats.

This chapter is excerpted from "Manage for Profit, Not for Market Share: A Guide to Greater Profits in Highly Contested Markets."

learning objective:

To demonstrate how to use internal data to help you differentiate your product and service offerings, repair and reinforce their price-value relationships, and determine how much more your company should be earning.

Publication Date:

Discipline:

Source:

Product number:

Length:

Also Available in:

description

Internal data are powerful but often inadequate or inappropriate to test certain hypotheses about your customers. These fundamental hypotheses include why customers behave the way they do and how they would respond to product and service changes. You can test these concepts reliably only through research with customers. This research can include market tests and customer surveys.

This chapter is excerpted from "Manage for Profit, Not for Market Share: A Guide to Greater Profits in Highly Contested Markets."

learning objective:

To describe strategies for gaining a sharper understanding of your customers' preferences to shift more money from their pockets to yours.

Publication Date:

Discipline:

Source:

Product number:

Length:

Also Available in:

description

The parties that make up your market-customers, competitors, analysts, regulators, and investors-are not mind readers. The only way they can understand and react to your company is to observe your public actions and statements. As a result, managers should take careful and conscious control of what they say in public. This chapter describes how public statements can help them secure profit opportunities, and how miscommunication or lack of communication can jeopardize them.

This chapter is excerpted from "Manage for Profit, Not for Market Share: A Guide to Greater Profits in Highly Contested Markets."

learning objective:

To help managers understand the consequences of their actions and statements in the marketplace, and what steps they can take to minimize the risk of unfavorable outcomes.

Publication Date:

Discipline:

Source:

Product number:

Length:

Also Available in:

description

In their book, "Manage for Profit, Not for Market Share," authors Hermann Simon, Frank Bilstean, and Frank Luby detail a four-phase program for finding and extracting higher profits from your market. This chapter addresses the first three questions that managers invariably ask when they embark on this program: how do I get started? What resources (people, money, time) do I need to commit? And what can go wrong?

This chapter is excerpted from "Manage for Profit, Not for Market Share: A Guide to Greater Profits in Highly Contested Markets."

learning objective:

To help you get started with the implementation of a program for increasing profits, and provide you with a short list of questions you can use to characterize your current situation and measure the general direction and extent of your progress.

Publication Date:

Discipline:

Source:

Product number:

Length:

Also Available in:

description

For decades, managers have heard incessantly from colleagues, superiors, professors, and pundits that their salvation lies in pursuing and preserving high market share. According to the authors, however, this fiercely held belief that market share is the most appropriate basis for setting corporate goals, managing the corporation, and measuring performance is today's greatest management fallacy. This chapter explains the profit and marketing malaise that has taken hold of managers in mature markets and resulted in the intense focus on market share, and provides an overview of how managers can overcome this malaise, step by step.

This chapter is excerpted from "Manage for Profit, Not for Market Share: A Guide to Greater Profits in Highly Contested Markets."

learning objective:

To present a case for abandoning market share culture in favor of a proven program for finding and extracting higher profits from your market.

Publication Date:

Discipline:

Source:

Product number:

Length:

Also Available in:

description

Some marketing and sales professionals allow the maxim of delighting the customer to dictate every move they make, including the prices they change. You should not overindulge your customer. Instead, make sure that you extract fair value for what you deliver. Aggressive and acquiescent actions hinder your own efforts to pursue higher profits.

This chapter is excerpted from "Manage for Profit, Not for Market Share: A Guide to Greater Profits in Highly Contested Markets."

*required field. You can change details at any time before activation.

The enrollment number will not limit students' access to materials. Accurate enrollment allows
us to manage site traffic and course activity.

If your course is affiliated with an institution not listed here or you need to create a course to last longer than 6 months,
please contact HBP Customer Service at custserv@hbsp.harvard.edu or 800-545-7685.

Type the information in each box. Boxes marked with an asterisk (*) are required information.
You can change the coursepack information, including the Start and Stop Dates and the quantity,
at any time before you activate the coursepack.

If your coursepack is affiliated with an institution not listed here or you need to create a coursepack
which is longer than 6 months, please contact HBP Customer Service at custserv@hbsp.harvard.edu
or 800-545-7685.